What I've Been Reading, May 2018

This note used to say that the links below appear in the order I read them and was meant imply that they were more or less random in their subject matter, other than being of interest to me. Recently I started a few new sections at the bottom of the links on subjects that are of particular interest to me. But I can see that as time passes I am moving to a greater degree of "curation", which the dictionary tell me is about organizing and maintaining a collection. Applied to this collection of links and books I guess this will mean selecting links less randomly and trying to make them relevant in the context of this blog and whatever is going on in the world during the month.

Links

• Art Berman: Think Oil Is Getting Expensive? You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet., Art Berman interviewed by Chris Martenson,
  A global supply crunch approaches...
• How babies learn—and why robots can’t compete, by Alex Beard, The Guardian—The Long Read
  "If we could understand how the infant mind develops, it might help every child reach their full potential. But seeing them as learning machines is not the answer."
  This one could have gone under Intelligence or Artificial Intelligence, so I put it here instead.
• Rotten results: Sainsbury's drops project to halve food waste, by Rebecca Smithers, The Guardian
  "However, the year-long experiment fell far short of its 50% target, with households believed to have cut food waste by only 9% – and telling Sainsbury’s the issue was not a priority for them."
• Do we need science and scientific discoveries to survive as a planet? Would we have been better off without science?
  A Quora Question with some excellent answers. I do think all the answers are missing the distinction between science and technology, and the idea that much technology was developed before the existence of science as a formal discipline.
• Against metrics: how measuring performance by numbers backfires, by Jerry Z Muller, Aeon
• You don’t have a right to believe whatever you want to, by Daniel DeNicola, Aeon
  "If some beliefs are false, or morally repugnant, or irresponsible, some beliefs are also dangerous. And to those, we have no right."
• 10 Best GMO Memes, by Stephan Neidenbach, Medium
• A Half Dozen Reasons to Reject the “Dirty Dozen”, by Kevin Folta, Medium
  "An activist marketing campaign harms food choice."
• 100 million Americans have chronic pain. Very few use one of the best tools to treat it, by Brian Resnick, Vox
• Were you GMO fooled this year? Here are the biggest GMO jokes to watch out for, by Michael Stebbins, Medium—GMO Answer
• Beyond the Label: 3 Truths & No Lies About GMOs, by GMO answers, Medium
• The EmDrive, NASA’s ‘Impossible’ Space Engine, Really Is Impossible, by Ethan Siegel, Medium
• Bananas have died out once before—don’t let it happen again, by Jackie Turner, Aeon

Intelligence

• The unwelcome revival of "race science", by Gavin Evans, The Guardian
• Socioeconomic Status Modifies Heritability Of IQ In Young Children, by Eric Turkheimer et al, University of Virginia
  "Results demonstrate that the proportions of IQ variance attributable to genes and environment vary nonlinearly with SES. The models suggest that in impoverished families, 60% of the variance in IQ is accounted for by the shared environment, and the contribution of genes is close to zero; in affluent families, the result is almost exactly the reverse."

Poverty, Homelessness, Minimum Wage

• Old and on the Street: The Graying of America’s Homeless, by Adam Nagourney, New York Times
  The emergence of an older homeless population is creating daunting challenges for social service agencies and governments already struggling to fight poverty.

Puerto Rico

• We Don’t Always Have Electricity, But We Accept Bitcoin, by Anne Mueller, Medium
  "The strange dynamics of survival and growth in a post-catastrophic Puerto Rico."

Artificial Intelligence, Autonomous Vehicles

• Frontier AI: How far are we from artificial “general” intelligence, really? by Mark Turck, Medium—Hackernoon
  
• Did Google Duplex just pass the Turing Test? by Lance Ulanoff , Medium
  The answer is no, getting closer, but only in very specific, narrow domains.
• No, Google Duplex Hasn’t Passed the Turing Test, by Junaid Mubeen, Medium
  "We’ve just relaxed our human ambition."
• Tesla Model S With Autopilot Slams Into Fire Truck At 60mph As Another Key Exec Departs, by Tyler Durden, Zero Hedge
  To be fair, we don't yet know (as of this moment) whether the car was on autopilot or not.
• Witness recalls horror of Tesla crash that killed two teens, by Tyler Durden, Zero Hedge
  Again, we don't yet know if the car was on autopilot, but it is interesting to note that car caught fire, even without a tank of gasoline. Clearly an issue with the Tesla itself, not the autopilot.
• Tesla’s Autopilot engaged during Utah crash, by Julian Hattem, Associated Press, The Detroit News
• Tesla in autopilot mode crashes into parked Laguna Beach police cruiser, by Brittny Mejia, LA Times

Books

Fiction

• Step to the Stars, by Lester del Rey
  I originally read this when I was about 10 years old. Re-read it purely for nostalgic reasons.
• Nemesis Games, by James S. A. Corey
  Book five of the Expanse series.
• On a Red Station Drifting, by Aliette de Bodard
• Into the Fire, by Elizabeth Moon
  Another episode in the "Vatta's Peace" series
• After the Last Day, by Don Hayward
  The author is a fellow I actually know, who lives in Goderich, the next town south from Kincardine along Lake Huron. What mainly attracted me to the book, though, is that it is a story of life after the collapse of civilization in the area where I grew up. It starts in the town where I went to high school, and then the plot expands to include most of Southern Ontario and a small part of Northern Ontario. Don has done a pretty good job of sketching out the events following a major financial collapse.

Non-Fiction

I'm still wading slowly through The Bell Curve, in order to be able to criticize it with some degree of credibility. This has also lead to reading some scholarly articles about IQ on the web, further slowing down my other reading. So I didn't read any other non-fiction books this month, even those I have a growing pile that I'd like to get to. To make up for this lack, here is a short list of some gems from my bookshelf:

• Yes, We Have No Neurons, by A. K. Dewdney,
  An Eye-Opening Tour through the Twists and Turns of Bad Science
• The Quark and the Jaguar, by Murray Gell-Mann,
  Adventures in the simple and the complex
• Visions of Caliban, by Dale Peterson and Jane Goodall,
  on chimpanzees and people.
• The Homebrew Industrial Revolution, by Kevin A. Carson
  A Low-Overhead Manifesto
  Also available as a free ebook or pdf
• A Matter of Scale, by Keith Farnish
  A book, A Solution. A Future.

What I've Been Reading, January 2018

Links

These links appear in the order I read them, rather than any more refined sort of organization. You may find some of the best ones are near the bottom—it varies from month to month.

• What to know about the “raw water” trend, by Jen Kirby, Vox
  
• How a hackneyed romantic ideal is used to stigmatise polyamory, by Carrie Jenkins, Aeon
  
• Country's first biotech rice released, The Daily Star
  Bangladesh is the country referred to.
• Opinion: Non-GMO madness by Karen Caplan, Fresh Fruit Portal
  
• Countries Most Dependent On Others For Food, by Lanessa Cago, WorldAtlas.com
  Many extraneous factors such as war, drought, regional conflict, and natural disasters can affect a country's ability to feed itself.
  I found the list quite surprising.
• Why Baltimore Doesn’t Heat Its Schools, by Lester Spence, Jacobin
  In postindustrial Baltimore, low-income residents are treated as expendable — and public services are slashed accordingly.
  And thus the policies of abandonment and exterminism begin to be put into effect.
• Marketing a Mistrust of the Safest Food Supply in History” by Kevin Folta on YouTube
  Separating sense from nonsense.
• 2018: The Year of the BIG ONE? by RE, at the Doomstead Diner
  RE's year end post, looking both back and ahead. Some excellent advice on how to hedge in the light of what appears to be coming down the tubes at us.
• Old Age and Societal Decline, by Richard Heinberg, Post Carbon Institute
• The Potential Pitfalls of Electric Cars, in 5 Charts, by Jack Stewart, Wired Magazine
• Anemia Discovery Offers New Targets to Treat Fatigue in Millions, by NBCV29.com
  Lorrie Delahanty, one of the researchers mentioned in the article is a Facebook friend and fellow member of the Peak Oil Facebook group.
• A Scientist Didn’t Disclose Important Data—and Lets Everyone Believe a Popular Weedkiller Causes Cancer, by Kiera Butler, Mother Jones
  Not exactly the kind of article I would expect from Mother Jones, but good for them.
• The difference between “can” and “can”, by Tim Watkins, The Consciousness of Sheep
  Economic reasons why technically possible things can't be done.
• Would Rural Areas Be Safer In A SHTF Situation?, by Tyler Durden, Zero Hedge
  
• A Gentrification Story with a Happy Ending, by Jon Michaud, The New Yorker
  Problems being solved on a local level. It can be done.
• Art Berman: Like It Or Not, The Future Remains All About Oil by Adam Taggart, Peak Properity
  Chris Martenson interviews Art Berman. Includes some excellent discussion of tight oil and gas (fracking).
• Gail Tverberg: The Coming Energy Depression, by Adam Taggart, Peak Prosperity
  Chris Martenson interviews Gail Tverberg
• Nobody Wants Old Carz, by RE at the Doomstead Diner.
  RE makes some insightful comments on the realities of car ownership.
• Beyond Leviathan's reach: On labor and freedom in humanity's deep history. A "This is Hell" Interview featuring James C. Scott, touching on the subjects covered in his new book Against The Grain.
• Guaranteed Minimum Agriculture by Simon Sarrius, Medium
  Why Basic Jobs might fare better than UBI
• Quit the Glyphosate Conspiracy Theories, by Cameron English, Real Clear Science
  
• The Great Oil Swindle by Chris Martenson, Peak Prosperity
• Composting the Permaculture Way by Mike Stasse, Damn the Matrix

Minimum Wage Increase

Here in Ontario the minimum wage increased from $11.60 to $14.00 on January 1, 2018. Next year it goes up to $15.00. Those are Canadian dollars, of course, so that's not as much money as it may seem, and it still doesn't seem like much. But percentage wise it's a big jump and, predictably, businesses are raising quite a big stink. Here are some links discussing the issue. If they seem one sided, well, OK, but the other side has already been well represented in the mass media.

• Planning for progress: Minimum wage increase is a correction long overdue, by Erica Shaker, Behind the Numbers
• A report that analyzes every minimum-wage hike since 1938 should put a bunch of nonsense ideas to rest, by Nick Hanauer, Business Insider
• If Denmark has no minimum wage laws, should Canada follow suit?, by Tom Parkin, Toronto Sun
  One doesn't expect such progressive ideas in the Sun. (Don't be mislead by the title.)

Books

Not a big month for reading—I spent too much time writing, and shoveling snow.

Fiction

• Crashing Heaven by Al Robertson
  

Non-Fiction

• There's no App for That by Richard Heinberg, The Post Carbon Institute.
  Technology and Morality in the Age of Climate Change, Overpopulation, and Biodiversity Loss. Great stuff, which I can highly recommend. Not technically a book, but I printed it out to read at my leisure rather than sitting in front of the computer.

And to fill out this month, here are some gems from my bookshelf, aimed at those of us in the northern hemisphere who can only dream about gardening at this time of year.

• The Resilient Gardenerr by Carol Deppe
  Food Production and Self-Reliance in Uncertain Times, including the five crops you need to survive and thrive—potatoes, corn, beans, squash and eggs.
• The Tao of Vegetable Gardening by Carol Deppe
  Cultivating Tomatoes, Greens, Peas, Beans, Squash, Joy and Serenity.
• The Truth about Garden Remedies by Jeff Gillman
  What works and what doesn't and why.

What I've Been Reading, October 2017

Links

These links appear in the order I read them, rather than any more refined sort of organization. You may find some of the best ones are near the bottom—it varies from month to month.

• Physicists find we’re not living in a computer simulation, by Andrew Masterson, Cosmos
  The sci-fi trope might now be put to rest after scientists find the suggestion that reality is computer generated is in principle impossible
• Gun violence in America, explained in 17 maps and charts , by German Lopez, Vox
  
• Diane Francis: Energy East's demise is Canada's Peak Oil Divide moment, by Diane Francis, Financial Post
  "This week’s cancellation of another oil pipeline--from Alberta to New Brunswick--should not be a cause for celebration as it is in some minds."
  Exactly the kind of talk one would expect to find in a newspaper dedicated to BAU (business as usual). But really, without understanding limits it's hard to discuss this sort of thing intelligently.
• How to Survive the Apocalypse, by Alex Williams, The New York Times
• C-Realm Radio 050, KMO interviews Dr. Richard D. Wolff about the US economy and the possibility of a transition away from capitalism.
• World’s No.1 Oil Trader: U.S. To See Final Oil Output Spike In 2018, by Julianne Geiger, OilPrice.com
  Five years ago, when President Obama was saying there was enough tight oil to last 100 years, Richard Heinberg was saying in his book Snake Oil that tight oil (fracking) would run out by 2020. Looks like even Heinberg might have been a bit optimistic.
• A New Look Inside the Cities of North Korea, by Joe Eaton, Citilab via Flipboard
  
• The Nazis were not lefty socialists you thick fucking cunts, by Malcolm Tucker, MT Tuckered
• Thoughts on Vegas, and Why Men Keep Doing This, by Charlie Hoehn, beyourself
  About mass shootings, gun violence and men's mental health, also about male loneliness.
• Anticipating the next crash, by Tim Morgan, Surplus Energy Economics
• You’re wrong about Second Amendment rights, by Gene Yoon, Ginsudo on Medium
  The Second Amendment is intended to preserve the threat of armed revolt against tyranny.
• All of the World’s Money and Markets in One Visualization, by Jeff Desjardins, Visual Capitalist
  An infographic
• A spike to puncture the bubble?, by Tim Morgan, Surplus Energy Economics
  Specifically an oil price spike to burst the debt bubble.
• Ways of life part 1 – original affluence , by DJ Zhao, This is Africa
  This part 1 is excellent. I was not impressed by part 2 and haven't yet read part 3.
• Twelve Lies Organic Lobbyists Commonly Spread about Pesticides , by The Risk-Monger, riskmonger.com
• Chimps and Monkeys have entered the Stone Age, by Colin Barras, BBC.com
  
• This Man Asked A Simple Question Online That Shut Down The Whole Anti-Abortion Argument, by Stella, boredpanada
  
• Should we be worried about the continuing radiation from the Fukushima Power Plant? , answers by ten different people, Quora
  And only one of those answer is seriously off base.
• Puero Rico's not coming back , by Salil Mehta, Statistical Ideas

Books

Fiction

• The Guards, by Ken Bruen,
  A Jack Taylor mystery.
• The Peripheral, by William Gibson
  A story about time travel (sort of) and collapse, by the master of cyberpunk.
• Visitor, by C. J. Cherryh
  Seventeenth in the Foreigner series, still worth reading, with a surprise near the end.
• Bannerless, by Carrie Vaughn
  A post collapse novel which avoids some of the worst stereotypes of that genre.
• pH, A Novel, by Nancy Lord
  University politics in Alaska in a time of falling ocean pH (ocean acidification).

Non-Fiction

• Enough is Enough, by Rob Dietz (Author), Dan O'Neill (Author), Herman Daly (Foreword)
  Building a Sustainable Economy in a World of Finite Resources

And here are a couple of gems from my bookshelf:

• The Third Chimpanzee, by Jared Diamond
  The evolution and future of the human animal.
• The Long Descent, by John Michael Greer
  A Users Guide to the end of the industrial age.

What I've been Reading, September 2017

Links

These links appear in the order I read them, rather than any more refined sort of organization. You may find some of the best ones are near the bottom—it varies from month to month.

• What is the Scientific Consensus on GMOs?, by John Paul, Ada's Technical Books and Cafe
• Why Oil Prices Can’t Bounce Very High; Expect Deflation Instead, by Gail Tverberg, Our Finite World
  Gail gives a good explanation of what's going on with commodity prices—why they're going down and why they are unlikely to make a sustained recovery.
• Middle Aged Men Need More Friends, by Tom Ashbrook,On Point, NPR
  Men and friendship. By middle age, many have too little of it. And it’s a threat to men’s health.
• What's the harm? Skeptics and scholars respond, by Sagredo, Science and Skepticism
• The healing power of nature, by Rebecca Lawton, Aeon
  "The idea that immersing yourself in forests and nature has a healing effect is far more than just folk wisdom"
  This idea is pretty appealing to me and is supported by my own experience. On the other hand, the article has all the marks of junk science. Another case of having to wait until the latest research gets incorporated in the scientific consensus (or not, as the case may be). In the meantime, a nice walk in the bush would probably be beneficial.
• Stop pretending you really know what AI is and read this instead, by John Pavlus, Quartz
• Aramco CEO sees oil supply shortage as investments, discoveries drop, by Karolin Schaps, David Dolan, Reuters
• There's No App For That, by Richard Heinberg, Post Carbon Institute
  
• Exposing the great 'poverty reduction' lie, by Jason Hickel, Aljazeera
  
• How global warming likely made Harvey much worse, explained by a climatologist, by German Lopez, Vox
• As Irma closes in, Republican mayor of Miami blasts Trump for ignoring climate change, by Kiley Kroh, Think Progress
  "This is the time to talk about climate change."
• Greening the Apocalypse, Epistemological Uncertainty with KMO, radio interview from Australia.
• Lessons on how to confront fascists, by Michael Coren, The Toronto Star
  Referring to the British Union of Fascists nthe 1930s:
  "The response from moderate conservatives, many liberals, the political establishment, and even the Jewish leadership was to try to ignore these zealots, and to not oppose them on the streets. The militant opposition to the blackshirts, people were told, was heavily Communist, intent on violence and in some ways as bad as the Nazi right. It’s eerie how similar these words are to the arguments of so many columnists and politicians today. They were wrong then, they’re wrong now.
  In 1936 an organization of radical and poor Jewish men and women from London’s east-end, dockworkers, the local Irish community, various labour unions and, yes, the Communist Party physically prevented a mass march by the fascists in something now known as the Battle of Cable Street. It broke the crooked spine of local fascism and obliged the government to take further action against the BUF.
  Reluctant as I am to make any comparisons with Hitler — seldom a good idea — there is no doubt that the complacency of the vast pre-war German centre was a major cause of the rise of National Socialism. 'Communists and Nazis are both extreme and as bad as each other' was their argument. “Let them fight it out but don’t take sides.” With hindsight it’s tragic and nauseating."
• The green energy cornucopia is 100 percent wishful thinking, by Stan Cox, Climate and Capitalism
  
• The Success Bloggers Are Selling You Bullshit., by Jon Westenberg, Medium
• The One Food Label I Avoid, by Nicole Rodriguez, Enjoy Food. Enjoy Life

Books

Fiction

• Hild: A Novel, by Nichola Griffith
• Milk Run (Smuggler's Tales From The Golden Age Of The Solar Clipper Book 1), by Nathan Lowell
• To Fire Called (A Seeker's Tale From The Golden Age Of The Solar Clipper Book 2), by Nathan Lowell
• The Western Star, by Craig Johnson
  The latest Walt Longmire mystery.
• Wait for Signs: Twelve Longmire Stories, by Craig Johnson,
  A collection of Walt Longmire "Christmas" short stories.
• Outies, by Jennifer Pournelle
  Reviewers on Amazon were rather critical of this book, but I enjoyed it. A third book in the "Motie" series by Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven, it lacks the politically preachy tone found in much of what Jerry wrote.

Non-Fiction

• From Bacteria to Bach and Back, The Evolution of Minds, by Daniel Dennett

There are a couple of other books by Daniel Dennett on my shelf:

• Consciousness Explained, by Daniel Dennett
• Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, by Daniel Dennett

And here are a few more of my old favourites, a trio of excellent "woo fighting" books:

• Snake Oil Science: The Truth About Complementary and Alternative Medicine , by R. Barker Bausell
  "Hailed in the New York Times as "entertaining and immensely educational," Snake Oil Science is not only a brilliant critique of alternative medicine, but also a first-rate introduction to interpreting scientific research of any sort."
• PaleoFantasy, by Marlene Zuk
  What Evolution Really Tells Us About Sex, Diet And How We Live
  "Popular theories about how our ancestors lived—and why we should emulate them―are often based on speculation, not scientific evidence... Armed with a razor-sharp wit and brilliant, eye-opening research, Zuk takes us to the cutting edge of biology to show that evolution can work much faster than was previously realized, meaning that we are not biologically the same as our caveman ancestors."
• The Balance of Nature: Ecology's Enduring Myth, by John Kricher

What I've Been Reading, August 2017

Kincardine's Rock Garden

Links

These links appear in the order I read them, rather than any more refined sort of organization. You may find some of the best ones are near the bottom—it varies from month to month.

• Self Insulating in Cold Climates, by RE at the Doomstead Diner
  
• Basic Heating: How to Keep Small Places Warm on a Low Budget , by RE at the Doomstead Diner
  
• Official and Remastered CFPUP SUMMIT Webcast 03/25/17, with John Michael Greer, James Kunstler, Chris Martenson, Frank Morris, Dmitry Orlov.
  This summit brought together an amazing panel to talk about issues ranging from politics, the economy, the food we eat, immigration, labor, poverty, minorities, war, and much more.
• Daniel Dennett’s Science of the Soul, by Joshua Rothman, The New Yorker
  A philosopher’s lifelong quest to understand the making of the mind.
  To me, it is obvious in a crystal clear way that Dennett is right about how consciousness works.
• Riding through the Homeless Camps in Anaheim California on the Santa Ana River Trail, by Jay Skip on You Tube.
  When it comes to homelessness, the story is only beginning.
• We now know how the Trump presidency will end. Let's hope we survive., by Tony Burman, The Toronto Star
  For my readers in the U.S.: this is what a major Canadian newspaper is saying about Trump.
• A World Without Poor People (Sort of), by Ian Welsh, on his eponymus blog.
  Except, of, course, that the mechanism for making people rich only works if you're already rich.
• This Is How Big Oil Will Die, by Seth Miller, New Co Shift.
  Both this link and the one below are about the future of electric cars. This one, optimistically, has electric cars completely taking over by 2025,and the oil companies going down in the process. The one below says electric cars won't be ready to replace gas and diesel cars when the ban on those vehicles takes effect in 2040 (in the UK).
  Both are based on completely different analysis of the promise of battery technology. Both are relying on cherry picked and anecdotal evidence of battery lifetime and driving range. I have to say my experience with batteries leads me to be rather pessimistic, but I'm generally optimistic about electric cars. For most people, who live in cities, driving range isn't going to be a huge issue.
  I don't think autonomous cars are going to be available nearly as soon as Seth Miller would have us believe. And if they are, a rash of accidents will give them a lot of bad publicity when they least need it.
• Electric cars won’t get us very far. Because they can’t, by Ross Clark, The Spectator.
  "If the problems of range and battery cost can be solved, the government’s ban on petrol and diesel cars would not be a problem. But then neither would it be necessary, because motorists would go electric anyway. Mile for mile, running an electric car is already far cheaper than running a petrol car — Nissan suggests less than 2p a mile if the electricity is bought off-peak, compared with over 10p for petrol or diesel. Servicing costs are also markedly lower."
• Derrick Jensen interviews Alice Friedemann, on Resistance Radio
• What is a cult?, by Tara Isabella Burton, Aeon
  Cults are exploitative, weird groups with strange beliefs and practices, right? So what about regular religions then?
• Heat For Tomorrow, by John Weber, Sunspot
  "Many materials used in our industrial world require energy from mining to manufacturing for processing and transportation. The energy for some of these products is in the form of high temperatures, 1100°C–2000°F"
  It's hard to see how renewables (wind and solar) could ever supply such heat.
• Close Calls: Three Times When Humanity Barely Escaped Extinction, by Esther Inglis-Arkell, Gizmodo
  
• Why we fell for clean eating, by Bee Wilson, the Guardian
  The oh-so-Instagrammable food movement has been thoroughly debunked – but it shows no signs of going away. The real question is why we were so desperate to believe it.
• From oilslick to tyranny, by Norman Pagett, Extra News Feed
  A prosperous society is an orderly society. (And vice versa.)
• Farm Babe: The internet’s biggest culprits of fake news in agriculture, by Michelle Miller, Farm Babe, Ag Daily
• Debunking Race Pseudoscience—White Genocide, Eurabia and Other White Supremacist Nonsense, by Debunking Denialism
• Why bullshit is no laughing matter , by Gordon Pennycook, Aeon
• The Dark Side of Resilience, by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic and Derek Lusk, Harvard Busienss Review
• Here’s my story - how a Texas Republican became a liberal progressive, by Ron Wiseman, Quora
• There Is Life After Civilization Collapse, by Joe Brewer, Extra News Feed
  "Many vital things must be preserved during collapse if we are to avoid another Dark Age. Among them is the need to preserve science itself as a set of institutional practices, communities of expertise and storehouses of knowledge. Yes, that’s right. Science is threatened by the planetary crisis. Science is important because it provides the tool set for discernment in a world where those who know what is going on can navigate change effectively."
  
• Have we finally reached Peak Car? by Lloyd Alter, Treehugger
• An Intimate History of Antifa , by Daniel Penny, The New Yorker
  "You fight them by writing letters and making phone calls so you don’t have to fight them with fists. You fight them with fists so you don’t have to fight them with knives. You fight them with knives so you don’t have to fight them with guns. You fight them with guns so you don’t have to fight them with tanks."
• Apocalypse then—The lessons of violence and inequality through the ages, from the Economist
• Humans can’t tell legitimate science from junk science, by Ethan Siegel, Medium
  "When you’re confronted by some new information, how do you tell whether it’s valid or not?"
  Try looking at the scientific consensus.
• Little Black BOOK of Junk Science, by Alex Berezow, Ph.D.,Senior Fellow of Biomedical Science, American Council on Science and Health
  Full of solid, if somewhat controversial, information.
• Milk and dairy products: good or bad for human health? An assessment of the totality of scientific evidence, by Tanja Kongerslev Thorning, Anne Raben, Tine Tholstrup, Sabita S. Soedamah-Muthu, Ian Givens, and Arne Astrup, NCBI.
  The short answer: good for human health.
• Corporate Tax Cuts Don’t Create Jobs, They Enrich CEOs, by David Dayen, The Nation
  I've been saying this for ages!

Books

Fiction

• The Last Good Man, by Linda Nagata
• The Goliath Stone, by Larry Niven and Matthew Joseph Harrington
  Terrible book which I wouldn't recommend to anyone. NIven should be ashamed to put his name on such drivel.

Non-Fiction

This was a busy month with travel, family events and gardening, so I didn't get much non-fiction read. But here are a selection of books by Richard Heinberg that I've read in the past, and can certainly recommend.

• Our Renewable Future—Laying the Path for One Hundred Percent Clean Energy , by Richard Heinberg and David Fridley,
  Reading between the lines, I would say the authors are far from convinced that it is even possible.
• Snake Oil—How fracking's false promise of plenty imperils our future , by Richard Heinberg An excellent debunking of all that fracking nonsense.
• Blackout—Coal, Climate and the Last Energy Crisis, by Richard Heinberg
  Before you buy into the "there are several hundred years worthof coal left" fallacy, have a look at this book.
• Power Down, by Richard Heinberg
  One of the first Peak Oil books I ever read, back on 2006.
• The End of Growth—Adapting to Our New Economic Reality , by Richard Heinberg

What I've Been Reading, July 2017

Squirrel hanging upside down
while picking and eating mulberries in our backyard.

Links

These links appear in the order I read them, rather than any more refined sort of organization. You may find some of the best ones are near the bottom—it varies from month to month.

• "From Horrific To Catastrophic": Court Ruling Sends Illinois Into Financial Abyss, by Tyler Durden, Zero Hedge
  
• Museletter #296: The Peak Oil President?, by Richard Heinberg, Museletter
  
• 2016 Tight Oil Reality Check, by David Hughes, Post Carbon Institute
  
• Here's How NASA Thinks Society Will Collapse, by Alex Brown, The Atlantic
  Too much inequality and too few natural resources could leave the West vulnerable to a Roman Empire-style fall.
• Trump’s Coal Delusions, by Richard Heinberg, Resilience/Post Carbon Institute
  In all likelihood, our real future lies elsewhere—with distributed renewable energy and a planned substantial reduction in overall energy usage through efficiency measures and a redesign of the economy. The inevitable transition away from fossil fuels will constitute a big job, and it only gets bigger, harder, and more costly the longer we delay it. Claiming that it makes sense to return to coal at this late date is delusional for economic as well as environmental reasons.
• Scientists Sharply Rebut Influential Renewable-Energy Plan , by James Temple, MIT Technolgoy Review
  Nearly two dozen researchers critique a proposal for wind, solar, and water power gaining traction in policy circles.
  And of course we will eventually switch over to entirely renewable energy. But it will entail a significant decline in energy use, population and the level of technology we can support. Some of us call it collapse.
• How Renewable Energy Advocates are Hurting the Climate Cause , by Paul McDivitt, Resilience.
  Read the comments, too--some good material there.
• Yes Virginia, We Really Did Land On The Moon, by C. Stuart harwick.
  Debunking anti-science nonsense--love it!
• In praise of cash, by Brett Scott, Aeon.
  "Cash might be grungy, unfashionable and corruptible, but it is still a great public good, important for rich and poor alike." Especially for the poor, I'd say.
• Fear of radiation is more dangerous than radiation itself, by David Ropeik, Aeon.
  
• The Truth About Glyphosate and Wheat, by Sarah Shultz, Nurse Loves Farmer
  
• Good news: There is no honeybee crisis, by Margaret Wente, The Globe and mail.
• In defence of hierarchy,, by along list of authros, Aeon
  
• Minds, Machines and Evolution, Daniel Dennet, interviewed on Living on Earth.
  Only a brief mention, but apparently Daniel things there is a good chance of a technological crash.
• ‘The Planet Could Become Ungovernable’, James Hansen interviewed by David Wallace-Wells, New York Magazine.
  Climate Scientist James Hansen on Obama’s Environmental Record, Scientific Reticence, and His Climate Lawsuit Against the Federal Government
• "Canada Is In Serious Trouble" Again, And This Time It's For Real, by Tuler Durden, Zero Hedge
• The economics of enough, by Dan O'Neill at TEDxOxbridge.
  There aren't many TED talks that impress me. This one comes close. I suspect though, that the speaker's idea of "enough" would have his suggested steady state economy settle out at a considerable higher level that is actually possible.
• Brace for the Oil, Food and Financial Crash of 2018, by Dr. Nafeez Ahmed, Insurge Intelligence
• Global Oil Fields in Decline (HSBC), by Kim Fustier and Gordon Gray, HSBC
  
• An Insider's View: The Dark Rigidity of Fundamentalist Rural America , by Forsetti's Justice, Alternet
  In deep-red white America, the white Christian God is king.
• Lark or night owl? Blame your ancestors, by Helen Briggs, BBC News
• Why Capitalism is Just Shitbag Science, by Holly Wood PhD, Medium
• What not to do in a disaster, by Zaria Gorvett, BBC
  This speaks to the first few seconds or minutes of a disaster. I am a little afraid it may perpetuate some of the standard disaster myths. For debunking of those, see the link below.
• Disaster Mythology and Fact: Hurricane Katrina and Social Attachment, by Binu Jacob, MPH, Anthony R. Mawson, MA, DrPH, Marinelle Payton, MD, PhD, MS, MPH, and John C. Guignard, MB, ChB [Edin], FErgSd, National Library of Medicine.
  Distaster myths debunked, note especially myths 4 and 5.
• Researchers have been underestimating the cost of wind and solar , by Gail Tverberg, Our Finite World
• Do More! What Amazon Teaches Us About AI and the “Jobless Future”, by Tim O'Reilly, WTF on Medium
  Some good points, but still misses the idea of dwindling surplus energy and economic contraction.
• Canada’s Secret to Resisting the West’s Populist Wave, by Amanda Taub, Thew Interpreter, The New York Times
• Why Canada Is Able to Do Things Better, by Jonathan Kay, The Atlantic.
  Most of the country understands that when it comes to government, you pay for what you get.
• How could we cope if capitalism failed? Ask 26 Greek factory workers, by Adita Chakrbortty.
• The Great Recovery of America’s Infrastructure: Cancelled , by Tom Lewis, The Daily Impact
• What Can India Teach Us About Abolishing High-Value Currency?, by Julie McCarthy, NPR Parallels
  
• Moral Foundations
  Moral Foundations Theory was created by a group of social and cultural psychologists to understand why morality varies so much across cultures yet still shows so many similarities and recurrent themes. In brief, the theory proposes that several innate and universally available psychological systems are the foundations of “intuitive ethics.” Each culture then constructs virtues, narratives, and institutions on top of these foundations, thereby creating the unique moralities we see around the world, and conflicting within nations too.

Books

Fiction

• A Meeting in Corvallis, by S.M.Stirling
  
• Planetfall, by Emma Newman
  I was a little disappointed by the ending.
• Bowl of Heaven, by Gregory Benford and Larry Niven
  The start of a two book series.
• Borne, by Jeff VanderMeer, Harper Collins
  Overall rating of 4 stars on Amazon.com and lucky to get it.
• Shipstar, by Gregory Benford and Larry Niven.
  The second and concluding book in this series.

Non-Fiction

• The Scoop on Poop, by Dan Chiras, New Society Publishers
  
• Sustainable Materials, without the hot air, by J. M. Allwood & J. M. Cullen
  Making buildings, vehicles and products efficiently and with less new material.
  Excellent book. And a few years ago I read the one below:
• Sustainable Energy without the hot air, by David J. C. MacKay
  The only complaint I have about this book is that, while the author is very solid technically, he seems to be unaware of the connection between surplus energy and the economy. As a result he makes some suggestions that appear to be technically feasible, but which would be disasters for the economy. Involving low EROEI energy sources, of course.

What I've Been Reading, May 2017

Links

These links appear in the order I read them, rather than any more refined sort of organization. You may find some of the best ones are near the bottom—it varies from month to month.

• America's Disgusting, Boundless Hatred for Poor People, by Brittney Cooper, Alternet
  We're now legislating away poor people's right to be happy.
• People think juice is good for them. They’re wrong, by Heather Ferris, Elvira Isganaitis and Florence Brown, Washington Post
  Step away from the juice bar.
• More Rigs Don't Mean More U.S. Gas, by Christine Buurma and Naureen Malik, Bloomberg
  Gas rigs have doubled since August; output falls 1.2%
  Average Marcellus well produces 51% of what it did a year ago
• You're not going to believe what I am about to tell you, by The Oatmeal.
  "It's OK to stop, to listen, to change."
• Climate Change: The Forgotten People and the Displacement of Nations , by Aine Clarke, Warwick Globalist
  The multifarious struggles that nations, rich and poor, face against the impacts of a changing climate.
• What Will Kill Neoliberalism? A roundtable on its fate.
  By Joelle Gamble, Paul Mason, Bryce Covert, William Darity Jr. and Peter Barnes.
  A good read, but these leftists need to face up to the realities of biophysical economics, surplus energy and resource depletion. In other words, scarcity.
  And by the way, don't work too hard.
• Nano-nonsense: 25 years of charlatanry, by Scott Locklin, Locklin on science
• Book Review | When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation, by Allan Stromfeldt Christensen, at Filmers to Farmers
  A good review of Alice J. Friedman's When The Trucks Stop Running
• Think Resilience: Chapter 5 - Pollution, by Richard Heinberg, Post Carbon Institute
• Life-and-death thought experiments are correctly unsolvable, by Julian Baggini, Aeon
• When will Chernobyl be habitable again? From Quora.
  There are particularly good answers from Marcelo Pacheco and Virgil Fenn. Only one answer that misses the point and is largely motivated by fear of radiation, by "Anonymus".
• How to disagree with people online, by Johanna Drott, of Remix IT to the Streets.
  A handy guide that will keep you arguing for hours.But at least with some degree of civility.
• What know-it-alls don’t know, or the illusion of competence, by Kate Fehlhaber, Aeon, on the Dunning Kruger Effect.
• Decoupling wealth creation, energy consumption and CO2 emissions, by Roger Andrews, Energy Matter
  As we usually find when we look into it, we find that decoupling isn't happening.
• Arctic stronghold of world’s seeds flooded after permafrost melts, by Damian Carrington, The Guardian.
  No seeds were lost but the ability of the rock vault to provide failsafe protection against all disasters is now threatened by climate change
• Say a Prayer for the Homeless: Trump’s People Will Not, by John Stanton, Dissident Voice
• What if People Owned the Banks, Instead of Wall Street? By Jimmy Tobias, The Nation.
  From Seattle to Santa Fe, cities are at the center of a movement to create publicly owned banks.
• Worrywarts Rejoice: Psychologists have great news for people who worry a lot
  by Jordan Rosenfeld, Quartz
• Peak Shale? Monstrous Declines May Kill US Energy Independence, by Dr. Heinrich Leopold, MarketSlant
  Shale Oil & Gas Production Costs Spiral Higher As Monstrous Decline Rates Eat Into Cash Flows
• My Family’s Slave, by Alex Tizon, The Atlantic
  She lived with us for 56 years. She raised me and my siblings without pay. I was 11, a typical American kid, before I realized who she was.
• Over The Last 10 Years The U.S. Economy Has Grown At EXACTLY The Same Rate As It Did During The 1930s, by Michael Snyder, the Economic Collapse Blog
  The numbers are interesting, but I certainly don't agree with this guy's conclusions—the US needs higher taxes and a government that isn't starved for funds. Their military budget certainly could do with some reduction though.
• How to culture jam a populist in four easy steps, by Andrés Miguel Rondón, Open Democracy
  All very well, but the real, underlying problem in Venezuela is the low price of oil and no amount of politics will fix that.
• Wind turbines are neither clean nor green and they provide zero global energy, by Matt Ridley, The Spectator.
  We urgently need to stop the ecological posturing and invest in gas and nuclear.
  He's right about wind turbines, but I can't agree with the author's conclusion about gas and nuclear—what we need to invest in is conservation and a controlled, deliberate energy decline.
• Think Resilience: Chapter 6 - Political & Economic Management, by Richard Heinberg, Post Carbon Institute
• The Coming Seneca Cliff of the Automotive Industry: the Converging Effect of Disruptive Technologies and Social Factors, by Ugo Bardi, Cassandra's Legacy

Books

Fiction

• Too Like the Lightning, by Ada Palmer
  Great read, saturated with original ideas. But totally oblivious to the role of surplus energy in enabling civilization.
• Cold Welcome, by Elizabeth Moon
  Another pirate/privateer/military story with a strong female protagonist. I wonder what Freud would say....
• Forty Words for Sorrow, by Giles Blunt
  A murder mystery, for a change. This one sited here in Ontario. I have a weakness for mysteries in unique locales: Walt Longmire in Wyoming, Jommy Perez in the Shetland Islands, Sonchai Jitpleecheep in Bangkok.
• Walkaway, by Cory Doctorow
  Another book full of ideas, some of which I had thought I'd originated, but here Doctorow is doing innovative things with them while I'm still in the starting blocks.

Non-Fiction

• Communism for Kids, by Bini Adamczak
  A strange little book which caused a bit of a stir when MIT Press published a translation from the original German.
• A Field Guide To Lies : Critical Thinking in the Information Age , by Daniel Levitin
  I can highly recommend this one.

And a few from my bookshelf that I have read over the last few years:

• The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload , by Daniel Levitin
  Another book by Levitin, also highly recommended.
• The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives, by Leonard Mlodinow
• Food Security for the Faint of Heart, by Robin Wheeler
  Keeping your larder full in lean times.
• Willow Basketry: A How-To Guide, by Jonathan Ridgeon
  There are quite a few willows growing along the lakeshore and river here in Kincardine. This spring and last spring I harvested a large armful and started teaching myself to make wicker baskets. This book was a big help.

What I've Been Reading, February 2017

Up until a few weeks ago, I was spending a lot of time on Facebook. So much so that more important things--writing this blog, as well as things in the real world away from the computer, were suffering. So, I gave up on the majority of things I was doing on Facebook. Such as:

• spreading the word about the scientific consensus to those who have been fooled by the organic farming, health food and alternative medicine industries
• trying to convince conventional farmers that their industry isn't sustainable.
• "liking" and reposting articles about American politics--they are just going to have to get along without my input.
• likewise for Canadian politics

As far as getting out the word about Peak Oil, Climate Change, economic contraction and collapse, I'd like to think this blog is a better vehicle than Facebook. I'm still posting links to my blog posts on the Facebook Peak Oil Group and a few other select places where the audience is receptive.

I'm no longer keeping Facebook tab open in my browser. For Facebook friends who'd like to reach me via Facebook messaging, I have the messaging application installed on my desktop, so I'll still get your messages, without having to open up Facebook and expose myself to temptation.

With some extra time now available, in addition to more writing, I am doing more reading, and I have noticed that I miss being able to post links to the interesting articles that I've found on the net and the good books that I've been reading. For some time I'd been think about doing a once-a-month post herer, consisting of links and books and this was just the added incentive I needed.

So, here we go. Other than being divided into links, fictional books and non-fictional books, these are in not grouped according to subject, nor are they in any particular order.

Links

• How to convince someone when facts fail, Scientific American
• The Uber Lie, Richards Heinberg
• Is the Fukushima reactor falling into the ocean? Snopes
• Peak Uranium: the uncertain future of nuclear energy, Ugo Bardi
• Society Could Collapse In A Decade, Predicts Math Historian, Huffington Post
• It's about 50 degrees warmer than normal near the north pole, Washington Post
• How global economic growth will drown in Trump’s oil glut after 2018, Nafeez Ahmed
  Don't be fooled by the title, this is a good one.
• Some notes on the worst case, Charles Stross
  Or What is Trump really up to?
• Recovering from disasters--social networks matter more than bottled water and batteries, Daniel P. Aldrich
• Is the Bakken A Bust?, Ron Patterson, Peak Oil Barrel
• A world economy snapshot, Tim Morgan
• Retail apocalypse gains momentum, Alternative News und Medien
  David Stockman warns everything will grind to a halt after march 15th
• Peak wealth and peak energy, Charles A. Hall, The Automatic Earth
• California City Erects 'Prison Camp' To Deal With Homeless, Zero Hedge

Books

I've been reading for well over 50 years, so in addition to books I've read in the last month or so, I'll be including some that I've read less recently. It will take me a while to catch up.

Fiction

• The Mandibles: A Family, 2029–2047, Lionel Shriver
• Splinterlands, John Feffer
• The Water Knife, Paolo Bacigalupi
• Children of the Comet, Donald Moffitt

Non-Fiction

• The Gluten Lie, Alan Levinovitz
• The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself, Sean Carroll
  The Author's Website
• Tomorrow's Table, Organic Farming, Genetics and the Future of Food, Pamela C. Ronald and Raoul W. Adamachak
• Communities That Abide, Dmitry Orlov
• 150 Strong, A Pathway to a Different Future, Rob O'Grady
• Beyond Civilization, Humanity's Next Great Adventure, Daniel Quinn
• Tribe, on Becoming and Belonging, Sebastian Junger
• The Carbon Bubble, What Happens to Us When It Bursts, Jeff Rubin